In SAP Convergent Charging, four types of online charging are provided:
Event-based charging with or without credit control
Session-based charging (with credit control and quota reservation)
Blank charging for advice of charge functions
Offline charging of past events is supported in a postpaid environment.
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Important: These features are deprecated since version 1.0 and must be replaced by the session-based charging. These features are available only if you use offers and subscriptions. They are not available for charge plans and provider contracts. |
SAP Convergent Charging allows you to reserve resource usage by using the prerating and postrating functionality; however, this functionality is especially suitable for the charging of events like SMS (Short Message Service) because such events do not depend on time.
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Important: It is strongly recommended to read the limitations on the session-based charging. |
Unlike the prerating and postrating, the session-based charging is more suitable to handle a wide variety of rateable instances such as:
Rating of volume: Video download, for example
Rating of time: Telephone calls, for example
Concurrent services in real time
The session-based charging is performed in real time and is able to manage the reservation of units for many services at the same time. For example, while calling on a mobile phone, a client can download a video. The units include the balance of a prepaid account and the counters in a provider contract (or subscription).
Counter reservation and credit control
A session-based charging is provided with counter reservation and credit control. The credit control is a mechanism which directly interacts in real time with a balance and controls or monitors the charges related to service usage. The credit control does the following:
Checks if credit is available on the balance
Reserves credit
Deducts the reserved credit from the balance when the service is completed
Refunds the balance with the reserved credit not used
How does a session-based charging operate?
The session-based charging is well adapted for telephone services for two reasons:
The amount of resources that a subscriber may consume cannot be a priori known.
Other services debit the same balances and counters at the same time; therefore, counters and monetary balance must be reserved in advance.
In this case, a certain amount of monetary or non-monetary units is reserved on the subscriber’s balance. Permission to use an amount of resources that matches the unit reservation is then allowed. When the granted units have been used or when a new, not yet authorized chargeable event occurs, a new request is sent for unit allocation. When resource usage has been executed, the actual amount of resource usage (used units) must be known so that reserved amounts can be credited to the subscriber's balance, ensuring that the correct amount gets debited.